Photos of a kickass, beautiful wedding in Georgia
Conan O'Brien's 2000 Harvard commencement speech →
I’d like to thank the Class Marshals for inviting me here today. The last time I was invited to Harvard it cost me $110,000, so you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit suspicious […] Students of the Harvard Class of 2000, fifteen years ago I sat where you sit now and I thought exactly what you are now thinking: What’s going to happen to me? Will I find my place in the world? Am I really graduating a virgin? I still have 24 hours and my roommate’s Mom is hot. I swear she was checking me out.
… It’s particularly sweet for me to be here today because when I graduated, I wanted very badly to be a Class Day Speaker. Unfortunately, my speech was rejected. So, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to read a portion of that speech from fifteen years ago: “Fellow students, as we sit here today listening to that classic Ah-ha tune which will definitely stand the test of time, I would like to make several predictions about what the future will hold: “I believe that one day a simple Governor from a small Southern state will rise to the highest office in the land. He will lack political skill, but will lead on the sheer strength of his moral authority.” “I believe that Justice will prevail and, one day, the Berlin Wall will crumble, uniting East and West Berlin forever under Communist rule.” “I believe that one day, a high speed network of interconnected computers will spring up world-wide, so enriching people that they will lose their interest in idle chit chat and pornography.”
… The point is that, although you see me as a celebrity, a member of the cultural elite, a kind of demigod, I was actually a student here once much like you. I came here in the fall of 1981 and lived in Holworthy. I was, without exaggeration, the ugliest picture in the Freshman Face book. When Harvard asked me for a picture the previous summer, I thought it was just for their records, so I literally jogged in the August heat to a passport photo office and sat for a morgue photo. To make matters worse, when the Face Book came out they put my picture next to Catherine Oxenberg, a stunning blonde actress who was accepted to the class of ‘85 but decided to defer admission so she could join the cast of “Dynasty.” My photo would have looked bad on any page, but next to Catherine Oxenberg, I looked like a mackerel that had been in a car accident. You see, in those days I was six feet four inches tall and I weighed 150 pounds. Recently, I had some structural engineers run those numbers into a computer model and, according to the computer, I collapsed in 1987, killing hundreds in Taiwan.
… There is also sadness today, a feeling of loss that you’re leaving Harvard forever. Well, let me assure you that you never really leave Harvard. The Harvard Fundraising Committee will be on your ass until the day you die. Right now, a member of the Alumni Association is at the Mt. Auburn Cemetery shaking down the corpse of Henry Adams. They heard he had a brass toe ring and they aims to get it.
… So, I was 28 and, once again, I had no job. And then, an insane, inexplicable opportunity came my way . A chance to audition for host of the new Late Night Show. I took the opportunity seriously but, at the same time, I had the relaxed confidence of someone who knew he had no real shot. I couldn’t fear losing a great job I had never had. And, I think that attitude made the difference.
… I’ve dwelled on my failures today because, as graduates of Harvard, your biggest liability is your need to succeed. Your need to always find yourself on the sweet side of the bell curve. Because success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you’re desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way.
I left the cocoon of Harvard, I left the cocoon of Saturday Night Live, I left the cocoon of The Simpsons. And each time it was bruising and tumultuous. And yet, every failure was freeing, and today I’m as nostalgic for the bad as I am for the good.
So, that’s what I wish for all of you: the bad as well as the good. Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally. And remember that the story is never over.
Man Painting in Heilongtan Park, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China.
A sweet little oasis in my city.
“Here’s my challenge. Right now, put aside 100 hours over this summer. Do it right now, in your head. Put that time aside. 100 hours. 8 hours a week for the next 12 weeks. One hour a day, or one working day a week. It’s one summer out of your entire life, it’s nothing. Okay, you’ve got that 100 hours? Now for the next two days, go to talks and start conversations with people you don’t know, and choose what to spend your 100 hours on. I guarantee that everyone in this room can produce something or has some special skill, and maybe they’re not even aware of it … Because when you contribute, when you participate in culture, when you’re no longer solving problems, but inventing culture itself, that is when life starts getting interesting.”
The situation in Xinjiang right now is nothing like what happened in Iran or in Tibet last year.
As of yesterday, I was unsure about whether the 156+ death toll mostly consists of Han Chinese or Uighur protesters, and whether the number is an under- or overestimate.
Based on what I’ve heard from a couple of friends and colleagues in Urumqi and living close to the action (some of them Uighur - they participated in the protest and got out as it turned ugly), the rumors are probably true that a majority of those killed were Han Chinese, many of them bystanders and residents beaten by roving mobs.
Everyone I know is shaken and upset because this kind of violence on the part of a small percentage of Uighurs hurts their cause. And it confirms the impression of so many Chinese that Uighurs are barbaric, thieving hooligans who terrorize their Han neighbors and must be crushed with force.
The defensive, self-righteous comments left by droves of angry Chinese and Chinese-Americans on NYT’s comments board make me sick. (“As a Chinese, I am really proud of the bloody blow Chinese government has dealt to these uighurs thugs.”) The Chinese government is absolutely repressive in Xinjiang. With policies that seem almost designed to foment hatred (e.g. forbidding Uighur government employees from fasting during Ramadan, forcing out all Uighurs living in Beijing from their homes and back to Xinjiang during the Olympics) and practically institutionalized racism (e.g. Xinjiang’s rapidly growing HIV/AIDS epidemic is completely unchecked because the majority of patients are Uighur, while the majority of health officials, hospital administrators and doctors are Han who often purposefully allow their patients to die unless bribed by international aid organizations to treat them), how could they act so fucking indignant when the bitterness boils over? In Yunnan, I’ve been mistaken for a Uighur several times (including by a repairman who refused to fix my bike) and got a glimpse of the kind of discrimination they deal with every day.
The violence in Xinjiang the past couple days is like a self-fulfilling prophecy playing itself out. Really sad.
“Three stories about a man and a woman, all three using the same actors. Three years: 1966, 1911, 2005. Three varieties of love: unfulfilled, mercenary, meaningless. All photographed with such visual beauty that watching the movie is like holding your breath so the butterfly won’t stir.” - Ebert
About the visual beauty, I concur. But that was not enough to save me from dozing off for a full 20 minutes during the 2nd part. It was the only time I have ever fallen asleep in a theater.
The only reasons I made it through Part 3 are my particular affection for 1. Chang Chen, and 2. pretty much anything that has to do with modern-day Taipei. Another lushly gorgeous picture here.
“The American Revolution was not a simple affair of all of us against all of them. And not everyone thought they would benefit from the Revolution. We’ve got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.”
— Howard Zinn (via azspot x notemily)
